Eclipse 2009 composite (July 31, 2009)

Hi-res TIF image (2.5M)

A solar eclipse photo (gray and white) from the Williams College Expedition to Tianhuangping, China (July 22, 2009) was superimposed on an image of the Sun's outer corona taken by the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) and shown in red false color. LASCO uses a disk to blot out the bright sun and the inner corona so that the faint outer corona can be monitored and studied. Further, the dark silhouette of the moon was covered in the computer with an image from SOHO's Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT), showing (with orange false color) helium gas near the surface of the sun. SOHO's orbit about the L1 Lagrange point lies outside the Moon's orbit about Earth, so SOHO never sees solar eclipses.

Credits: Williams College Eclipse Expedition: Jay M. Pasachoff, Bryce A. Babcock, Sara Dwyer, Rachel Wagner-Kaiser, Yung Hsien Ng Tam, Huajie Cao; EIT and LASCO images courtesy of NASA/ESA; compositing by Steele Hill, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

SOHO began its Weekly Pick some time after sending a weekly image or video clip to the American Museum of Natural History (Rose Center) in New York City. There, the SOHO Weekly Pick is displayed with some annotations on a large plasma display.

If your institution would also like to receive the same Weekly Pick from us for display (usually in Photoshop or QuickTime format), please send your inquiry to steele.hill@gsfc.nasa.gov.